GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY, I’d choose a time-traveling island over the zombie apocalypse any day.
Comparing life to fictional television shows is a questionable practice at best, but it’s kind of the way that I think. And while many have compared LOST and The Walking Dead on a technical or story-telling level, I thought I’d add some worldview talk into the mix. For all it’s faults, I think LOST is a better model for processing life. The Walking Dead, I fear, is the model to which an unintentional life defaults.
First, LOST is rooted in mystery: mysterious location, mysterious circumstances, mysterious people. While that mystery often leads to a sense of fear, a sense of wonder is also present. TWD, on the other hand, has an initial mystery (how did this zombie apocalypse happen?), but then leaves the mystery behind for episode after episode of misery (really, how mysterious can that farm be?).
Second, LOST assumes that the past and people matter. Many of the show’s best episodes were “flashbacks” that revealed simple character archetypes to be truly complicated. And as those stories were revealed, a passenger manifest became a working community. On the TWD, the best of characters remain shallow, mostly forgettable, and often frustrating. Maybe that makes them more real? I’m not sure. Perhaps it simply makes them more disposable.
Most importantly, though, LOST has a strong sense of purpose, of a purpose, behind things. True, as the series progressed, that purpose developed in ways that frustrated some viewers. But there was always a sense that something was up, that things were going somewhere. There was a sense of hope and the promise of redemption. While those things may glimmer for a moment in TWD, they are too often eclipsed by survival. With TWD, survival is all there really is. As it begins its third season, with everyone infected with whatever makes you a zombie, TWD has become a show about waiting for your time to come.
A Walking Dead kind of life is dangerous: limited mystery and wonder, disconnection from people disconnected from a sense of story, a lagging or forgotten sense of purpose. It might make for a great video game, but not for much of a life. I’d take a LOST kind of life any day.
Space Enough, and Time 